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  <TITLE>What is glean?</TITLE>
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  <META NAME="author" CONTENT="Allen Akin">
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<H1>What is <I>glean</I>?</H1>

<P>
<I>glean</I> is a suite of tools for evaluating the quality of an
OpenGL implementation and diagnosing any problems that are discovered.
<I>glean</I> also has the ability to compare two OpenGL implementations and
highlight the differences between them.

<P>
Who should care about <I>glean</I>?

<UL>
  <LI>Anyone who buys or reviews graphics cards.
  <BR>
    <I>glean</I> gives you the ability to compare performance, features,
    and image quality of different graphics cards.  Since the source code
    is freely available, you can customize <I>glean</I> to add tests for
    the things that are most important to you.

  <LI>Software developers.
  <BR>
    With <I>glean</I> you can learn which features really work for a
    given combination of hardware and driver.  You can also find the
    timing for basic drawing operations, mode changes, texture
    downloads, etc. so that you can maximize the performance of your
    application.

  <LI>OpenGL driver developers.
  <BR>
    <I>glean</I> can increase your confidence that your driver software
    is correct and efficient.  It also allows you to compare a new release
    to a previous release, to make sure that there are no regressions in
    quality or performance.
</UL>

<P>
<I>glean</I> is provided under an "MIT/X11-style" copyright, which permits
it and its derivatives to be used at no cost for both commercial and
non-commercial projects.

<H2>Acknowledgments</H2>

<P>
Development of the <I>glean</I> framework and diagnosis tools is supported by
<A HREF="http://www.valinux.com/">VA Linux Systems.</A>

<P>
<A HREF="mailto:johan.smet@glo.be">Johan Smet</A> took on the Herculean
job of porting <I>glean</I> to Microsoft Windows.  The importance of
this work cannot be understated!  In addition to making <I>glean</I>
useful to a great many more people, it enlarges the pool of developers
that can contribute to <I>glean</I>.

<P>
I'm also grateful to <A HREF="mailto:brianp@valinux.com">Brian Paul</A>
and <A HREF="http://www.valinux.com/">VA Linux</A> for providing
<I>glean</I>'s home on the Web.

<P>
<A HREF="mailto:cass@nvidia.com">Cass Everitt</A> suggested several
improvements in the ways <I>glean</I> uses C++.

<P>
Currently Allen Akin is coordinating enhancements to <I>glean</I>.
Please address <I>glean</I>-related correspondence to
<A HREF="mailto:akin@pobox.com">akin@pobox.com</A>.

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<SMALL>
  <UL TYPE=DISC>
    <LI> <A HREF="index.html"><I>glean</I> home</A>
    <LI> <A HREF="whatis.html">What is <I>glean</I>?</A>
    <LI> <A HREF="build.html">How do I build <I>glean</I>?</A>
    <LI> <A HREF="run.html">How do I run <I>glean</I>?</A>
    <LI> <A HREF="next.html">Where do we go from here?</A>
      <UL TYPE=CIRCLE>
        <LI> <A HREF="newtest.html">Adding new tests</A>
	<LI> <A HREF="newfeat.html">Adding new infrastructure features</A>
	<LI> <A HREF="overview.html">Overview of <I>glean</I> internals</A>
        <LI> <A HREF="repo.html">Creating a repository of results</A>
        <LI> <A HREF="port.html">Porting <I>glean</I></A>
        <LI> <A HREF="cleanup.html">Cleaning up loose ends</A>
      </UL>
    <LI> <A HREF="changes.html">What has changed recently?</A>
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